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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsStudies Question the Pairing of Food Deserts and Obesity
It has become an article of faith among some policy makers and advocates, including Michelle Obama, that poor urban neighborhoods are food deserts, bereft of fresh fruits and vegetables.
But two new studies have found something unexpected. Such neighborhoods not only have more fast food restaurants and convenience stores than more affluent ones, but more grocery stores, supermarkets and full-service restaurants, too. And there is no relationship between the type of food being sold in a neighborhood and obesity among its children and adolescents.
Within a couple of miles of almost any urban neighborhood, you can get basically any type of food, said Roland Sturm of the RAND Corporation, lead author of one of the studies. Maybe we should call it a food swamp rather than a desert, he said.
Some experts say these new findings raise questions about the effectiveness of efforts to combat the obesity epidemic simply by improving access to healthy foods. Despite campaigns to get Americans to exercise more and eat healthier foods, obesity rates have not budged over the past decade, according to recently released federal data.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/18/health/research/pairing-of-food-deserts-and-obesity-challenged-in-studies.html
cali
(114,904 posts)And that phrase shows what right wing dogshit that study is.
It doesn't take a fucking genius to realize that food deserts are real, that it's far, far fucking harder to eat healthily if you're poor rather than middle class or more.
I'm poor. I eat healthily. I'm also educated and a fine cook and I grew up in a home where convenience foods of any kind were shunned. It's hard to do what I do. It takes time, imagination and work. And that's without any children to care for.
elleng
(131,176 posts)MrScorpio
(73,631 posts)As well as convenience plus advertising.
For one, bad choices are heavily marketed in inner city and non-affluential areas. It's been that way since the bad old days of cigarette billboards.
And markets in urban areas may be more plentiful, but they usually tend to be smaller, with poorly stocked inventories of inferior products, if you compare them to their suburban counterparts.
Now it's true that people who live in the city may tend to walk more, but if their diet choices and other eating habits and lack of exercise overwhelms whatever caloric benefit of not always having the convience of a car, you're going to have that obesity problem that we have today.
razorman
(1,644 posts)that we live in a country where we can complain about the quality of the food that poor people eat, rather than its non-existence. I have been to countries where someone would knife you for a Big Mac.